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Getting Close to the Humpback Whale
Text by Dr John POTTER and Caroline DURVILLE
Photos by Dr John POTTER, Caroline DURVILLE and Dr Adam PACK

"Blow at 3 o'clock, he's up." Immediately the skilled helmsman (in this case a helmswoman) turns to position us behind the Humpback whale. He will breathe perhaps three times, signaling each with a misty plume and the tell-tale hump of his dorsal fin just breaking the surface. Then, with luck, he'll arch his back and show his flukes as he dives again, giving us the opportunity to take a digital photograph of his characteristic markings for later identification. This particular whale is a lone singing male and he will stay down for about 12-15 minutes between surfacing events. As soon as he dives the research boat moves into the puka (a persistent smooth patch of water created on the surface where the whale dives) and we can clearly hear the singing reverberating through the hull. We deploy a tracking snorkeler guide while we scramble to get our dive gear on. "That's him and he's on the cow". Strange language.

For 2 weeks this March we joined a Humpback Whale Research Project in Maui. Every year from January through April a team of researchers from the University of Hawaii go out on the water 11 out of 14 days to learn more about these fascinating and endangered mammals. Watching whales frolicking in the sea seemed like it would be a dream job. We know better now. A typical day looks like this:

06:30 Get up, have breakfast and prepare a packed lunch. Get all the gear ready (cameras cleaned, fresh film, batteries charged and changed, etc.) and loaded in the van and car.
07:30 Leave the whale house and drive 40 minutes to where the research boats are kept, near the whale wintering grounds. Unload the van, get the boats off their moorings, park the vehicles, refuel, load all the gear on board, collect dive tanks, etc. as required for the day.
09:00 Out on the water looking for and observing Humpback whales, gathering data. There may be hours of patient watching and log recording, punctuated by frantic activity preparing for a dive (usually just as you've lathered sun lotion all over yourself and broken out the packed lunch).
18:00 Return to harbour, get all the gear off the boat, wash down, load the van, etc. then drive the 40 minutes back to the house, trying not to fall asleep.
19:40 Back home. Time to cook, clean up the gear, enter the data into the computer, review the video footage, eat, repair anything that broke, etc.
23:30 Fall into bed totally exhausted.

It is hard work for the regular team members, requiring enormous dedication, but also very rewarding. Observing these majestic whales up close is a fantastic experience.

The North Pacific Humpback whale is a protected species. It spends the summer months feeding on krill and small fish in Alaska. About two-thirds of the population migrates 3,000 miles south to the islands of Hawaii for the winter months where they do not eat at all. The whales are thought to come to these protected warm waters to calve and mate. We saw many moms and calves, often displaying splashy surface behaviour. Sometimes the mom would be slapping her pectoral fin or tail fluke while the little one practised miniature copies. Well, miniature is not quite the right word. Calves are born weighing several tonnes. The most impressive display is the breach. Imagine a 45 ton whale jumping clear out of the water more than half its body length and then crashing back in with a tremendous splash.

Whale watching boats are not permitted to approach closer than 100 m. Whale researchers may get closer if they have a permit, of which only a few are issued. Dr Adam Pack of the University of Hawaii is one of the lucky ones. He wrote a successful permit application, and he's got permission to have us added to that permit to dive with rebreather scuba gear on these magnificent animals.

The objective is to record the strength of the male song, a complex and eerie sequence of sounds that the entire population agrees all the singing males should sing the same way, at least for that season. It lasts 10-15 minutes and consists of several themes. The themes this year are called Cow, Toilet, Hiccup, Creaky-door, Ratchet and Scream. The song is always sung in this order, so when you hear the 'Scream' theme, you know he's about to surface. What we don't know about Humpback song dwarfs what we do know. We don't know, for example, what it is for. We don't know how the animal makes the sound, or how loud it is, or if it is projected more strongly in one direction than another. It is to begin to answer some of these questions that we have proposed to dive on singing males, who lie stationary in the water in a head-down orientation at 10-40 m depth. We do know that Humpbacks blow bubbles as a sign of aggression, so open-circuit scuba will not do. Not if you don't want to challenge a 40-ton male. So we use expensive and technical rebreathers that let only a little 'fizz' of air out every now and again. We take digital video recorders with us, equipped with hydrophones to record the song with CD-like quality. No-one has tried this before. It is hard enough to find singing males, and the thought of actually diving into the clear blue water with them is exhilarating and not a little intimidating. How will they react?

As we swim towards our surface snorkeler guide, we can make out the dark shape below. With little ceremony, we dive. There's not much time. The song becomes louder, filling our ears, the water, making our chest and stomach vibrate. The power is awesome. Quite suddenly, the dark shape becomes clearer and we can see the creases in the skin, the knobbly pectoral fins extended almost to within touching distance. We are perhaps only 10 m from a 40-ton whale that is filling the ocean with sound and eyeing us suspiciously. It is an unreal experience. It makes you feel like a mosquito; insignificant, tiny and at the mercy of this gentle giant. We point our cameras and take our readings. We do not have time to be awed, we have work to do. It seems that we have hardly started when the Humpback arrives at his final themes, rotates to point toward the surface and begins to pump his powerful back and flukes. Two or three mild flexes and he's moving at 4-5 knots, now gliding to the surface to breathe. We see him slide by majestically and then soar over our heads, reaching for the surface. In a moment he's disappeared once again into the blue distance. That something so large can be so graceful, and disappear so easily, makes you wonder if he was really there. Or were you dreaming? As if to dispel out doubts, after a moment, the deep haunting grunts of the 'Cow' theme, the beginning of a new song, fill our ears and remind us that he's still there, still singing his mysterious lament.

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